RE: "caption" position

Hi,

as per this week's telephone conference, I am temporary officially
responsible to organize the information flow between this mailing list
and the XForms Working Group. Please consider the reply given below my
personal opinion until it is confirmed by the Working Group next Monday.

You are right, positioning (and, while we are at it, styling) of
caption, help and hint is indeed an interesting topic. Like with the
earlier question about rows and cols, we are looking at the CSS Working
Group to provide help there because we see the requirements that you
point out. Through CSS, sufficiently flexible styling should be made
possible, even though we (not being the CSS gurus in the W3C :-) do not
always see how it can be done with current CSS. Of course, absolute
positioning is a solution - but it can't be the general solution to the
problem.

Please let us know what you think,

Josef

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Waleed Nema [mailto:wNema@MediaOne.net]
> Sent: Tuesday, July 17, 2001 8:47 PM
> To: www-forms@w3.org
> Subject: "caption" position
> 
> 
> Shouldn't the position of caption for a control be settable 
> (or is it) may
> be through attribute position="left | top | right"?
> 
> Another problem with captions is trying to align them. One 
> often resorts to
> dedicating a table column just for captions. Would there be a better
> solution?
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: www-forms-request@w3.org [mailto:www-forms-request@w3.org]On
> Behalf Of T. V. Raman
> Sent: Tuesday, July 17, 2001 10:29 AM
> To: Josef Dietl
> Cc: Roman Huditsch; www-forms@w3.org
> Subject: RE: textbox vs. textarea
> 
> 
> Also see my followup to this thread about the next draft
> using textarea to semantically distinguish fields where the
> author wants the user to type in substantial amounts of
> content.
> 
>     Josef> Roman, I'm glad we agree about the CSS approach.
> 
>     Josef> Yes, I do have an idea when the next draft should
>     Josef> be there. But I hope for your patience and
>     Josef> understanding: While we do our best to keep our
>     Josef> internal timelines, plenty of things beyond our
>     Josef> power can creep up and spoil the plans. For that
>     Josef> reason, we are not going to make public promises,
>     Josef> instead we will announce every new specification
>     Josef> to this mailing list as soon as it's public. To
>     Josef> give you a feeling of the orders of magnitude:
>     Josef> There is a W3C rule that every Working Group must
>     Josef> publish a new specification approximately every
>     Josef> three months. For the reasons given above, this
>     Josef> rule is not strictly enforced. Some groups are
>     Josef> faster, others are slower.
> 
>     Josef> While this is a fairly soft statement, I hope it
>     Josef> does the job for the time being.
> 
>     Josef> Josef
> 
>     >> -----Original Message-----
>     >> From: Roman Huditsch [mailto:r.huditsch@hico.com]
> > Sent: Tuesday, July 17, 2001 1:04 PM
> > To: Josef Dietl
> > Cc: www-forms@w3.org
> > Subject: AW: textbox vs. textarea
> >
> >
> > Well I think too that using CSS properties would be the best
> > way to make
> > sure that every browser (or nearly every browser) displays
> > the boxes as
> > the "programmer" would like them to be.
> > Do you know how long it will approximately take until a new
> > realease of
> > the XForms-spec.?
> >
> > Yours,
> > Roman
> >
> >
> >
> > -----Ursprü    Josef> ngliche Nachricht-----
>     >> Von: Josef Dietl [mailto:josef@mozquito.com]
> > Gesendet: Dienstag, 17. Juli 2001 12:55
> > An: Roman Huditsch; www-forms@w3.org
> > Betreff: RE: textbox vs. textarea
> >
> >
> > Hi Roman,
> >
> > as per yesterday's telephone conference, I am temporary officially
> > responsible to organize the information flow between this 
> mailing list
> > and the XForms Working Group. Please consider the reply 
> given below my
> > personal opinion until it is confirmed by the Working Group
> > next Monday.
> >
> > To answer your question: No, there is no way to declare 
> that a textbox
> > has rows=10 and cols=50. This mechanism of specifying sizes 
> has turned
> > out to be inflexible to say the least. ("Unreliable" is another term
> > that comes to mind.) Main difficulties were charset dependencies and
> > internationalization concerns.
> >
> > We have settled to define the size of the textbox through the
> > usual CSS
> > mechaisms and the constraints (length, allowed characters 
> etc.) in the
> > model. As far as I know, you can approximate the "old" effect by
> > specifying <textbox style="width:50ex; height:10em" ...>. 
> Other units
> > (e.g. cm or %) will obviously be more reliable.
> > The remaining open question that we are aware of is how to specify
> > wrapping / non-wrapping boxes. If there is more to do or the
> > solution is
> > unsatisfactory for you, please let us now.
> >
> > I will confirm or correct this message around 24 July.
> >
> > Josef
> >
> > > -----Original Message-----
> > > From: Roman Huditsch [mailto:r.huditsch@hico.com]
> > > Sent: Tuesday, July 17, 2001 12:18 PM
> > > To: www-forms@w3.org
> > > Subject: textbox vs. textarea
> > >
> > >
> > > Hi again!
> > >
> > > Reading the specification again, I missed the possibility of
> > > declaring a
> > > textarea as in HTML. Is ther a way in Xforms to display a
> > > textbox, which
> > > has for example rows=10, cols=50 ?
> > > Thanks and best regards,
> > > Roman
> > >
> > > > Roman Huditsch (RH )
> > > >
> > >
> > 
> _____________________________________________________________________
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> > > >
> > > >
> > >
> > >
> >
> 
> --
> Best Regards,
> --raman
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> IBM Research: Human Language Technologies
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Received on Wednesday, 18 July 2001 10:17:33 UTC